Precision Agriculture and the “Agro-Police State”

A Food First writer suggests Monsanto may have a larger hand in International Agricultural Decision-making than the FAO with the growing influence of precision agriculture.

Monsanto has been promoting precision agriculture, the collective name of a series of new agricultural data and crop monitoring technologies. In “Toward the Agro-Police State” Food First’s Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero asks: what will happen to rural America and farming communities worldwide if food processors, retailers and other major purchasers of agricultural produce start requiring suppliers to use precision farming and identity protection technology? Large American industrial farms, heavily capitalized and subsidized by the US government with tens of billions of dollars a year, will easily afford the technology. But struggling family farms could be put out of business.